4.25.2013

So, I’ve been insanely busy and done very, very little with
Paperhammer or even just general Warhammer 40K stuff. Those Ogryns were supposed to be done months
ago, and I’d actually wanted to get back to basics and build a paperhammer
tank. To be honest, I really don’t even
have time to post now, but I’m about to do some more shameless pandering and I
figured I should at least make it worth your while...

My book,Ex-Patriots, was re-released by
Broadway Books this week. Check it out.
Superheroes, zombies, mad scientists, super-soldiers... it’s got pretty
much everything. And a ton of people
think it’s actually good. You can even
get it in audiobook form, which means you can listen to it while you’re
building little toy soldiers and zombies.

Resident Evil 40,000

Hey, speaking of the shambling undead...

This is an easy little tip for zombies. I use it for my plague zombies in 40K, but it
would work fine for Fantasy zombies, too.
I started my plague zombie collection way back during the Eye of Terror
campaign. Under the current rules (with
Typhus) I’ve got about four solid squads of them, plus one little group of
zombie specialists who I just set loose as distractions. To help keep them straight when they’re in
big mobs, I have zombified Catachans, zombified Asgardian Rangers, the citizens
of Hive Romero led by the Seven Dwarves of Nurgle, and the Tanith Last and
Final.

The zombie Tanith are what sparked this post. I think it’s safe to say one of the defining
elements of the Tanith, visually, are their camo-cloaks. Now, one of the standard zombies has a little
bit of a shredded cape on his back, but it’s really short and doesn’t really
sell the big, sweeping cloaks the First and Only are described as having.

So, here’s an easy way to expand them a bit.

Get any little bit of thin plastic. I used some 1/4” strips I already had, but
this would work with just about anything.
Cut up some blister packs, plastic signs, soda bottles, plastic jars...
whatever.

However you get it, cut some pieces that are about 1/4” by 3/4”
long. The length doesn’t have to be
exact, and as you go along you may try some different lengths for variety. Once you have your pieces, cut them
diagonally, corner to corner.

Take these long, thin triangles and cut up the short
end. You’re trying to make them look a
bit frayed. I usually make three or four
length-wise swipes with my knife, then maybe hit it from the end to make the
gouges stand out.

There are two ways to glue them on. The simplest way is just glue them to each
side. The thin end goes at the top, and
I try to place them so they seem to flow naturally off the shoulders.

Apologies, by the way, for all the glare from the white plastic. It's rough with my setup to get a good balance between the white and the light gray.

For variety, on some of them I glue one of the triangles in from the edge a bit. This makes them look like big wrinkles or
folds in the material. When I do this, I
sand the thin end down a bit so it flows up into the top of the cloak better.

And that’s it. Bigger zombie cloaks just like that. A green
base with a few colors on top of it and I’ve got a really distinct group of the
undead.

...There Is Only War!!!

I'm a long-time Warhammer 40,000 fan who thinks there's a viable middle ground between the folks who insist on dropping a few hundred dollars to get a usable army and the people who show up with a rubber dinosaur to represent a Carnifex or some green army men bulking out their Imperial Guard platoon.

Don't get me wrong. I love Games Workshop's models and I hate seeing a milk carton standing in for a Land Raider. But when a financial crunch forced me to become a lot more thrifty with my toy soldiers, I didn't stop playing. I just found ways to customize and create perfectly usable units with the resources I had. And I've done it enough that I think it's worth sharing with anyone who's interested.

So save a few frozen pizza boxes, grab some white glue, and let's build an Imperial Knight that any loyal servant of the Emperor would be honored to have fighting alongside them.

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